Party Poker Blog

It's been cold here.

I love how they use the word 'campers' in the story below. That's what my hobo, Sean, calls his version of homelessness. He was an Eagle Scout. I tend to believe this because he truly is the most well-groomed hobo I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

He's hanging tough. I saw him today against the condolas, toting plastic bags full of ripple & beef jerky, as he eventually crossed over the tracks and into his camp.

Jeff Branham, 42 (left), Robert Worden, 42, and Kenny "Wolf" Neibel, 43, warm themselves around a fire Wednesday in the 500 block of Linn Street.



Segue: I'm bummed about poker. In so many ways, it's the end of an era. But on the flip side, somehow this experiment turned into a pr7.

Now go read Otis:
The Last Poker Game

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Homeless man died in cold
February 1, 2007
Fellow campers say he didn't want to go to shelter


QUEENSGATE - A homeless man found dead Wednesday morning in an outdoor camp near downtown Cincinnati was seriously ill and expected to die soon, his friends said.

Investigators were at the scene of the camp in the 500 block of Linn Street near Hamilton County's Queensgate medium-security jail, under a viaduct behind Queensgate Food Service.

It wasn't clear what caused the man's death - the extreme cold, his illness or injuries he suffered when his tent caught fire Tuesday afternoon. Overnight temperatures fell to 14 degrees and wind chills near zero in some areas.

Officials at the Hamilton County Coroner's Office said an autopsy was conducted Wednesday but the result will not be released until the coroner has reviewed it.

Officials said the death was not a homicide.

The man who died had throat cancer, diabetes and was an alcoholic, said the three men who also lived at the camp, which has been in existence for at least two years.

"He froze to death," said one of them, Kenneth "Wolf" Niebel, 43. "He was sick. He has been sick for a while, though. He had throat cancer."

The bitter cold overnight prompted the city of Cincinnati to declare a winter shelter emergency until 8 a.m. Wednesday.

The city also opened a temporary shelter at the Over-the-Rhine community center Tuesday night to get people out of the cold.

But Niebel and the other two men at the camp said they refuse to go to shelters, even after their friend's death.

"We always stay out," Niebel said. "Always.

"It's a way of life. We wouldn't consider going to a shelter unless it turned really, really, really bad. Then, maybe - and even then it's a maybe. Shelters are nasty. It's safer out here."

Another homeless man at the camp, Jeff Branham, said he also doesn't go to shelters.

"There's more problems there than we are going to have out here," Branham, 42, said. "About the only thing we have to worry about is severe weather. At shelters, the people that stay there, there's trouble.

"There's body lice and filth," he said. "People just let themselves go. I mean, I am out here and I am not the cleanest man in the world, but I keep cleaner than that."

Despite their friend's death, the men said they preferred to stay Wednesday night at another homeless camp nearby on Dalton Avenue.

Cincinnati firefighters were called shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday to the camp for a report of smoke in the area and a small fire in a rail yard.

Niebel and Branham said their friend had accidentally set his tent on fire with a kerosene heater trying to stay warm.

He refused medical treatment for burns when firefighters tried to take him to the hospital, they said.

Before firefighters arrived, the two men said they had dragged their friend away from the flames, put him around their fire and covered him with blankets.

My buddy over at Poker Wolf sent me an email today entitled: You sure do have some interesting readers.

Some more blogger news. In an important case both establishing the legitimacy of blogs as news sites and protecting bloggers from being forced to disclose sources, Apple Inc. was ordered to reimburse defendants for their legal fees.

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Apple Ordered To Pay Legal Fees For Bloggers

A California court made it clear to Apple that if the company wanted to find out who leaked details of an in-development product to bloggers, they'd actually have to do it legally. That lesson cost the company almost $700,000 in legal fee reimbursement.

This drama begins in 2004, when Mac fan sites AppleInsider and PowerPage reported the technological details about a product codenamed "Asteroid."

Apple sought the identity of the sources who leaked the information by filing suit against the bloggers, and subpoenaed their email records from email service provider Nfox.com. The company claimed that the reports violated California's trade secret laws.

A Santa Clara County court ordered Apple to pay the legal fees of their opponent this month, a development considered "a large moral victory for bloggers," according to Macnn.com.

The case brought up several important questions related to the status of the blogosphere: Do bloggers qualify as journalists? Can blogs be considered news sites? Does a private company have the right to suspend the protection of journalistic sources guaranteed by the First Amendment?

Though the court didn't actually qualify the bloggers as journalists, it was assumed that they were journalists for purposes of opinion, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who headed up the defense.

The EFF also convincingly maintained, based on the expert opinion of Professor Thomas Goldstein, former Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, that AppleInsider and PowerPage qualified as legitimate online news sites:

The publishers, editors and authors connected with Power Page and Apple Insider are engaged in trade journalism, bringing news to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

Further, Apple was prevented from accessing the email records of the defendants under the federal Stored Communications Act, which forbids ESPs from disclosing the contents of customers' emails and other electronic communications to private parties.

Though Apple claimed it had a right to protect its trade secrets, the EFF responded that the case wasn't about business rights, but about the means by which Apple can seek evidence. Subpoenaing journalist sources is not an acceptable means of discovery.

EFF opposes Apple's discovery because the confidentiality of the media's sources and unpublished information are critical means for journalists of all stripes to acquire information and communicate it to the public.

Because today's online journalists frequently depend on confidential sources to gather material, their ability to promise confidentiality is essential to maintaining the strength of independent media. Furthermore, the protections required by the First Amendment are necessary regardless of whether the journalist uses a third party for communications.